Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I also want to ask about the Government's priorities and its notion of reform when it comes to the health service and about a particular area of our health service. In the Visitors Gallery today are approximately from 50 to 60 home help assistants who provide vital services of care, support and backup to elderly and disabled citizens across the country, some of the most vulnerable sectors of society. These home help assistants have come together over recent weeks because the Government, as part of this raft of cuts, has cut 600,000 hours of home help. This comes on top of 500,000 hours of cuts that happened earlier in the year. More than 1 million hours of home help services have been cut as part of the so-called reform.

The Government is also moving to privatise home help services. Most of the home help assistants here today work for voluntary not-for-profit organisations. The Government has moved to outsource these services to multinational companies like Comfort Keepers, owned by Sodexo, a French multinational.

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